Comments on: Holding Firm: Thinking Thoughts on the Copywriting Value Proposition

By: Roberta Rosenberg

Roberta Rosenberg — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:57:56 +0000

@Heather – always glad to hear from a compadre. More and more journalists are finding their way to copywriting and its many variations. You’re ahead of the massive wave I’m expecting any time now.

By: Heather Angus-Lee

Heather Angus-Lee — Sun, 04 May 2008 13:07:42 +0000

Having been an underpaid journalist for 20 years, I started my own business as a web writer and deliberately hitched my wagon to SEO as a way to give value add to my creative services. I am finding that adding the goal “get found online” gives my clients a tangible, measurable push to sign up for my fabulous, professional writing services, i.e. I scare them with how their competitors are doing with that built-in market channel called the Internet!

I completely concur with Marc’s comment that “ideas and knowledge are my bread and butter, not just words”… I draw on my artsy-fartsy side (Ideas Rule!) as much as business savvy.

And, Roberta, I also posted recently about Daniel Pink’s new book “A Whole New Mind”; my value proposition is to take my right-brain and left-brain strengths and marry them for effective copywriting.

Great discussion here – I learned a lot, and felt validated to boot! Thanks to all.

Heather Angus-Lee’s last blog post..Shakespeare was Wrong – But, Then, He Wasn’t Writing for SEO

By: Roberta Rosenberg

Roberta Rosenberg — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:51:01 +0000

@Marc, you may be on to something. CopyCreative instead of CopyWriter? (First, we have to assume folks know what copy is. My in-laws, to whom I’ve been related to for 18 years now, still aren’t sure what copy is.) I think the focus on writer may also make it sound like pure fun as opposed to the hard work it usually is. (“You’re a writer? Wow, you must have fun all day being creative…”)
Unfortunately, the commoditization of writing – many of us are simply referred to as content providers – is here. The question is the ultimate value we bring to the client’s coffers. Thanks for your input!

By: Game 25: #3 The Copywriting Maven Versus #4 Seed Confident Writing | Writer's Resource Center

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:04:20 +0000

[...] been a lot of guest blogging over at Confident Writing. My favorite of the group is Holding Firm: Thinking Thoughts on the Copywriting Value Proposition by Robert Hruzek. It’s a goofy take on three elements of powerful writing (powerful writing [...]

By: Marc

Marc — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:49:36 +0000

Hi Roberta

I’ve always wondered if it’s the word “writer” in copywriter that throws people. Perhaps if the job title was CopyCreative the responses would be better.

Yes, copywriters do craft words, but they do so much more. I work in an agency environment. In an agency the Art Director and the Copywriter form a creative team. They are the soul of the concept and the execution.

Is an effective piece of communication just words and pictures? Hardly. It’s an understanding of the audience, from who they are and what drives them, to how they interact with specific media. It’s an understanding of the environment that surrounds a piece, such as societal trends, current aesthetics and what they communicate, what’s going on in the marketplace and how to rise above the noise.

A creative team bring a lot to bear on a project, and we all know that that requires considerable time and talent. I’m sure everyone who reads your blog also reads a stream of other RSS feeds relevant to what they do. We don’t absorb this knowledge by osmosis, we have to work at it.

As you said, a symphony is just a series of notes. A meal in an award winning restaurant could be just a few prawns on a plate with some herbs and cream poured on top. The new performance centre in your city might just be a roof held up by some concrete walls with a lot of windows.

To show the value of this, I’m extremely careful where I place the value of my work. Ideas and knowledge are my bread and butter, not “words” as such. So unless it’s potentially extremely lucrative I don’t pitch jobs (where the client is playing off more than one agency against each other and it’s usually necessary to give the ideas away in the process). If a proposal is required to secure a job I’m careful to stop short of giving all my ideas away up front. I make sure the client still needs my creativity and my knowledge, not just my words.

It’s the old “95% inspiration, 5% perspiration” equation. It’s really important to recognise where that the value of what we do is not in a dollar-per-word formula and that it can’t be traded like a commodity.

=) Marc

Marc’s last blog post..Looking For A Nano-Improvement